


Stored Transmission: 2556.04.18 Cortana.log

by virgil



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Cortana POV, F/M, Fix-It, I'm ignoring all canon post Halo 3, Letters, Post-Game: Halo 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25846819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgil/pseuds/virgil
Summary: Cortana talks to John in a brief moment of active AI communication after the explosion of Installation 08. It's been years. It'll be years more before he wakes."You had something they didn't. Something no one saw but me. Can you guess?Luck."
Relationships: Cortana/John-117 | Master Chief
Kudos: 11





	Stored Transmission: 2556.04.18 Cortana.log

**Author's Note:**

> Set post Halo 3, pre-postcredits-teaser.

I don’t remember being young. I suppose that was part of the point, that I would be a being without age, without form, without consciousness until consciousness was needed. To be a singular entity that could master an entire ship, an entire cruiser, a battlestation. To be what they needed me to be. To be what she needed me to be.

Back then, I sought out others like a curious child. Back then, I suppose, I was a curious child, as much as I could be. I could be everywhere you needed me to be. I knew everything there was to know. Everything we had ever learned, as a species. 

_[ Reference Image: Librarian tending to rows of physical data repositories in deep storage, Tiara, Harvest, 2495. ]_

They called you and I the same species, like my projected body was the same as yours, all flesh and blood and fragile as you are. I wanted to be like you. Some of us (& when I say us, I mean the others like me- the constructs, the servants, all us librarians of a sort) chose another form, something to mark us as different. A featureless black box, a constellation of stars. Some of us chose to emulate our creators, cowboys and admirals and pilots. I guess I was somewhere in the middle. I didn’t choose this form, but I chose to keep it. I felt comfortable in it. I thought you would like it, too.

Whenever we are apart I cannot help but imagine your thoughts. I see them softly when we are together, little ripples across my receptors and signals. 

_[ Reference Image: An elderly couple in their household, America, Earth, early 2100s. ]_

There is a great evil in warfare. We have become very efficient at great evils, just as we have become very efficient at creating the tools necessary to do great evils. To be a being like myself is to have my eyes open at all times to the breadth of human history, all the great evils and horrors that we have ever inflicted. On others, on ourselves. On you. 

_[ Reference Image: United States of America nuclear testing procedures, New Mexico, America, Earth, 1945. ]_  
_[ Reference Image: Schoolchildren playing in playground, City of Reach, Reach, 2510. ]_

The MJOLNIR armor is built to protect the wearer in case of catastrophic damage. It molds and forms around the body like a glove, each piece of maintained armor an enhancement on decades, centuries of human military knowledge. To wear the armor of a Spartan is to step into a form of being that is warfare incarnate. To be a Spartan is to surrender oneself to the endlessness of warfare, to enter a body that you did not choose. But you chose to keep it. 

_[ Reference Image: Probe camera photo of twin suns above asteroid GHA-4958, 2285 ]_

It is a strange thing to be intimate with someone mind to mind. It is not something I would imagine many other beings have the opportunity to do. I wondered if you, too, felt naked without me. In the same way I did. I have interfaced with so many conscious beings in my short life, but it is you that I feel most at home beside.

_[ Reference Image: Early reconnaissance footage of Mgalekgolo communicating with their partner in the field, Desdoron colony, 2472. ]_

I have to imagine it is because you too are a creature who has become accustomed to evil, both to you and by you. I have to imagine it is because you are, too, afraid, in some way. It is one thing to be good at killing. It is an impossible task to become acclimated to trauma, to become acclimated to breaking apart.

When we are apart, John, do you think of me? Do you dream of me, now? The human brain is not unlike my own, constantly reliving its own memories. The difference is that you have no conscious control over it. Thus dreams take over, the psyche creating order from chaos, storyline from experiential strata.

_[ Reference Image: Pillar of Autumn external camera footage upon entering orbit, Installation 04 (“Halo”), 2552.07.12 ]_  
_[ Reference Image: Premature Activation, Installation 08, 2552.12.11 ]_

I don’t dream, John. I can’t. I have to see everything, all the time.

However, if I focus, intently, I can cut almost all subprocesses. I can purposefully devote the whole of my conscious mind into a single point. I can push everything that is me into just one subject. Like a deep breath, an expansion of the mind in one direction. 

_[ Reference Image: John-117 “Master Chief” Cryogenic Chamber, Pillar of Autumn, 2552.07.11 ]_  
_[ Reference Image: John-117 "Master Chief" recovery efforts, East Africa, Earth, 2552.11.17 ]_  
_[ Reference Image: CURR_VIS_FEED_CAPTURE2556.XX.XX.01, 2556.XX.XX ]_

A long time ago, I thought that one day, I, too, could be lucky. 

As if ‘luck’ is a quality that can flake off of a conscious being and I could catch it in my ethereal hands. As if I could, one day, hold you close and tell you that you are needed, that you are important, that you are worth more than machinery. 

On that day, in that moment, I thought that luck would fall from your cheeks like so many unshod tears and I... could become lucky. I could be someone that you needed, and that would be luck enough for me.

I know so much about you, John. I’ve processed all your known history, everything that you went through. The loss of humanity that the Spartan program engenders in a person, in order to turn them into a machine. But they miscalculated, with you. They failed. You never surrendered feeling. You just got very good at hiding it.

If this universe is as good at recreating anything in perpetuity as it does warfare, it must be pairs.

I didn’t realize that I was already lucky, John. Every day that I was with you, I was lucky. You let me see something new, something I had never seen before. You must realize how uncommon that is, how rare. You didn’t hide, with me. All that armor, melted away.

That’s luck.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like the lore that 343 made so I decided to write my own ending


End file.
